in the best way
by Adreus
Summary: It's when Sora starts banging his head against her wall and Riku's eraser shavings have taken over her bed that Kairi decides enough's enough. —SoRiKai, gen.


**Notes: **Because the world needs more destiny trio. The title is probably temporary. I'm completely out of ideas right now.

_Kingdom Hearts _is property of Square Enix and Disney, I do not claim any rights.

* * *

_in the best way_

* * *

It's on the Sunday a week before break that Sora, Riku, and Kairi scatter themselves in Kairi's bedroom in a valiant attempt to make a dent in their respective piles of homework. Kairi's in her last year of high school so she doesn't have as much as Riku and Sora, who've both proven as apt as kids two year their junior and, therefore, are in lower level classes with larger work loads. Kairi's finished with her work, but Sora and Riku aren't – and their years away from home haven't exactly been full of school-like education, so Riku's not good with numbers and Sora's not good with literature, and it all sort of goes downhill from there.

It's when Sora starts banging his head against her wall and Riku's eraser shavings have taken over her bed that Kairi decides enough's enough.

"You guys," she says, sighing as she stands, "it's not that hard." She walks over to Sora, who's sitting on her computer chair, still abusing the wall. She stops him before his head is severely injured and then takes a moment to admire the fact that his hair is still perfectly in shape. It's almost like magic.

"Kai_ri_," the boy attached to the magic hair whines, "Books without pictures are _boring_." He points wildly to an offending beat up book lying on her desk, bookmarked a page or two in. Sora's been attempting to read it for at least two hours.

"Come on, Sora," she tries gently, "Don't you think you could—" but she cuts herself off when she hears _that sound_. It's the tell-tale slap of Riku's pencil hitting the floor as he reaches for his eraser and proceeds to rub off the entire page of his physics assignment. She doesn't get why the boy doesn't just _use another sheet of paper_, but it's starting to drive her a little insane and she's a second or so away from snapping just like Sora already has.

Kairi glares at Riku's paper with almost as much intensity as Riku does, and Sora's eyes follow hers. Riku's unaware that they've both stopped and are watching him: he's trying hard to be a good student (unlike Sora, who's been sitting around complaining, mostly), and is absorbed in his work. Riku sets down his eraser and starts all over again, draws a diagram and writes down the givens; velocity is this and distance is that, so acceleration must be this—

"No, no, that's wrong," he mutters to himself, and Riku hesitates; down goes his pencil and up comes his eraser and before she even knows she's going to, Kairi's shouting, "RIKU_. STOP!_"

It's like they're all brought out from some sort of trance; heads snap up and the boys are looking at Kairi and she's looking at the mirror, at her strawberry red hair and how it's standing up in odd places, a perfect reflection of her mentally stressed self (it's a little similar to Riku's mess, actually, and she thought Riku's hair was incapable of being anything less than perfect. Sora's, meanwhile, is perfectly fine). Her hands are balled into fists and, oh, is she shaking? Yeah, okay, she is.

"Kairi?" asks Sora slowly for the both of them, "You okay?"

She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, lets it go. Yeah, she thinks, she's all right. It's nothing she hasn't been through before. But it's not really a feeling she'd like to entertain, so Kairi makes up her mind and turns to her boys, smiling a psychotic little smile that scares them shitless in their stressed states – and probably would in their normal states, too.

"Guys," she says gleefully, "I think it's time for a day off."

Sora looks at Riku and Riku looks at Sora, and they grin, throwing their books behind them as Kairi helps them up.

* * *

They decide to go to a hillside park for the day; they're island dwellers, so they've been to beach too many times to count, and, honestly, the park is probably the only place they'll be left alone and won't be found. Everyone else they know from school and elsewhere will be at the pier.

Kairi drives, of course; Sora's parents are a little too overprotective of their recently returned child to let him anywhere near a steering wheel and Riku—to his chagrin—hasn't passed his test yet, so he's stuck shotgun, crammed uncomfortably in the tiny passenger seat of Kairi's buggy (Sora called backseat – he likes to see Riku squirm, unable to take the wheel even though they're all aware that his skills are superior to Kairi's).

They sing show tunes on the way there, Sora's purposely off key bellows ringing above the others' voices. Kairi's voice is mostly dissolving into giggles and Riku – the only one who knows all the words, being the oldest and with the best memory for meaningless things like this – guides them along in his tenor, a wicked grin on his face to match the one on Sora's. The ride is two hours long, enough to kill all their voices, but they're still a little upset when they arrive and have to stop.

Kairi and Sora lay out the blanket while Riku empties the car of their supplies – a picnic basket or two or three, some cans of soda, a whole lot of sugar, and some bubble soap. They lie down head to head to head on the blanket and watch the clouds floating by, blowing bubbles and laughing like they're ten again.

Sora brings a boom box and they listen to nostalgia on tapes and CDs, and sometime in the night it turns into Riku spinning Kairi around while they dance. Sora gets jealous and blows bubbles at Riku's face until Kairi dances with him, too, and somehow at the end of it all Kairi coaxes the boys into dancing with each other while she cheers them on from the sidelines. Sora and Riku share a look and a mischievous smirk and then Kairi's tackled, and they collapse in the grass and their laughter is loud enough in the night for the park administration to realize they're there after hours and kick them out.

On the way back Riku takes the wheel anyway because Kairi's too lazy, and Sora sits shotgun. Their voices are so hoarse from laughing too much and too loud that Sora has to communicate via hand signs, and Kairi and Riku spend most of the way back trying to decipher his messages. It turns out in the end that Sora's frantic mess of gestures means he really has to go to the bathroom – this becomes apparent when Sora gets frustrated and grabs the wheel, dangerously swerving them into a rest stop. Riku and Kairi tease him mercilessly for the rest of the night.

It's midnight by the time Riku pulls back into Kairi's driveway, and Sora's asleep on his shoulder and Kairi's curled up into a ball in the back, and honestly, he's too tired to move. He tries once to wake them but neither of them budge, and he supposes that's fine. They fall asleep together right then and there, and, yeah, he thinks, he could definitely get used to this.


End file.
